In the Black Mirror episode "Men Against Fire," soldiers are manipulated by neural implants into seeing their targets as monstrous “roaches.” It’s a chilling metaphor for how dehumanization makes violence easier to justify—how perception can be engineered to suppress empathy.

We might not have implants in our heads, but we're still constantly fed narratives—through news media, films, and even video games like Call of Duty—that shape how we see entire groups of people. Often, they’re cast as the villain, the threat, the other.

One group that’s been persistently portrayed this way is Muslims. From headlines that link Islam to terrorism to entertainment that uses Muslim characters as stock villains, these patterns have created a distorted image. Over time, it becomes easy to forget that we're talking about real people—people with families, histories, hopes, and beliefs as varied as anyone else’s.

Just like the soldiers in Men Against Fire, many of us are trained—subtly or overtly—to look past someone’s humanity. And that’s dangerous. Because once we stop seeing people as fully human, anything can be justified.

The way forward isn’t through more fear, but through understanding. We need to question the stories we’re told, listen more deeply, and seek out voices that aren’t always handed a microphone. Only then can we begin to replace suspicion with empathy—and division with something more human.

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